As on-line presences become larger fractions of the lives of on-line users, the users have ever growing number of interactions. Typically interactions take place within comments sections of active web sites (e.g., Amazon reviews, Facebook, new sites, etc.). However, such forums represent single instances of conversation venues that offer little control over the structure of the conversation. At best, participants are able to quote others or nest comments. In extreme examples, human moderators must exert control conversation content by removing content or locking threads. Ideally, owners of web sites or other on-line forums should have an ability to govern behaviors of the conversation itself.
Some effort has been directed to providing on-line video debates. One example of a video debate and comparison platform includes Squabbler™ (see URL www.squabbler.com), which allows for comparison of debater videos. Such techniques have been leveraged by the popular television show Shark Week in June and July 2012 (see URL www.sharkweekchallenge.com/howitworks). The Squabbler technology allows users to rate side-by-side videos and to post comments in a comments section of a web page.
Another example of a debate platform includes Hubbub™ (see URL www.hubub.com) as leveraged by CTV News in Canada (See URL politics.ctvnews.ca). Hubub makes further progress by allowing users to create challenges and present text-based opinions.
U.S. patent application publication 2008/0184122 to Grant el al. titled “System and Method for Conducting On-Line Discussions”, filed Jan. 13, 2012, describes a system for presenting video streams as if they had been generated continuously in a debater format. However, the Grant approach only provides for specific debate formats.
U.S. patent application publication 2008/0263585 to Gell et al. titled “System and Method for On-line Video Debating”, filed Jun. 15, 2007, also describes a debating platform. The system provides debate rules that the debaters agree to follow. As with Grant, Gell also fails to appreciate that conversations can take on many different forms other than mere debates.
U.S. patent application publication 2009/0144302 to Baldwin titled “Web Application for Argument Maps”, filed Dec. 18, 2008, provides some insight into representing meaningful structures of a complex debate. Such an approach can be useful when presenting debate information, but still fails provide insight into structured conversation management.
Yet another example that focuses on debates includes U.S. provisional application publication 2009/0292738 to Hurwitz titled “Conducting an Individualized, Virtually Moderated, Virtual Real Time Methodical Debate”, filed May 21, 2009. Similar to Squabble, Hurwitz also provides for uploading videos as part of a debating platform. As with the other cited art, Hurwitz also fails to appreciate that there are myriad other types of conversations beyond debates.
Interestingly, the above citations fail to appreciate that conversations, especially multi-modal conversations, can take on many different forms where each type of conversation could be managed differently. Thus there remains a need for conversation management infrastructure.
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